homepage Forums Air Combat & Civil Aviation Wings: Over Flanders Fields Deep Immersion DiD campaign -- Player Instructions (UPDATED 28 Nov 2018)

The War diaries of Sebastian Von Toombs. 1903 Prussia - 23rd January 1917 Flanders Fields.

My earliest memory is my father telling me that men could fly. I stood flapping my arms in the small vegetable garden of our home in Königsberg Prussia. My home, God’s own country. I stood in drizzle, rain pricking my eyes as I looked up and willed myself skyward. Impossibly heavy, my feet remained as rooted to the earth as the beetroot growing around me.

My friends talked of us being Teutonic knights riding white chargers. Wearing shining plate armour, brightly coloured surcoats, radiant pennants flitting around their lances. We ran in circles galloping on imaginary steeds. Following each other’s tails, in tighter and tighter circles until we collapsed exhausted laughing. I ran and giggled as energetically and enthusiastically as my small comrades in arms but my imaginary steed was never a horse, always a plane. I only wanted to fly. To be a knight of the Sky, jousting and fighting the ungodly, defending the weak and bringing law, order and God’s peace to the lands over which I flew.

When war broke out I applied at once for the fledgling Luftstreitkraefte. But was refused, it was seen by many as a waste of time and manpower. Instead, along with many of my childhood friends I joined the 3rd (East Prussian) Cuirassiers. I never gave up longing to fly. Even when riding the fastest horse I longed to be airborn. Three applications later I was accepted and here I am.

I finished my basic training and was utterly shocked and thrilled to be placed in a hunting squadron. And not any hunting squadron but the fairly newly formed Jasta 18. Many of the pilots there are legends, like decorated ace Walter von Bülow-Bothkamp, mentioned in hushed tones from even the most cynical and lazy of my fellow flight students.

I arrived at 11:30pm -the weather atrocious. Halluin, our airfield was in the grip of a winter thunderstorm brewed in Norway that had rolled in from the North Sea shrieking it’s wrath on the muddy war torn earth of Flanders. Such a storm is highly unusual, so rare in fact that the rest of the squadron thought it a Tommy bombardment. Only realising their mistake when,stepping from my transport to the airfield, my truck was struck by lightning. What an entrance!

I entered the Mess dripping wet, bag in hand my dreams fulfilled. But before I could take stock of the smoky hut and the youthful faces arrayed before me, a chant began. “Thor! Thor! Thor!”

The storm had blown its self out during the night and at first light I was to begin my familiarisation flights around the airfield and immediate area. I made my way to the hanger tent housing my pristine steed, a brand new Albatros DIII, my chest bursting with pride, my heart in my throat. My gasp could be heard in Berlin as I saw my charger, for the first time, freshly painted red and blue. And there catching the morning's pink light, alongside my personal monogram, in bright white wash was Thor’s hammer ready to strike for justice and truth.





... To Be Continued